PositiveThe Wall Street JournalMr. Snyder’s book is a well-timed defense of Frankfurter’s hands-off approach to judicial review at the Supreme Court, and more broadly tells the stirring chronicle of Frankfurter’s life as a supremely engaged citizen of the United States ... The judicial restraint championed by Frankfurter has its virtues, and Mr. Snyder’s biography ably articulates them. Frankfurter had an unshakable faith in the vibrant democratic culture that enabled his rise from obscurity, and he recognized that an overactive judiciary would distort that culture, compromising the Court in the process. The brutal confirmation battles of the modern era and sharp partisan splits in public opinion about the Court’s work attest to these dangers, and suggest that liberals and conservatives still have much to learn from Frankfurter’s example.
Steve Luxenberg
PositiveThe Wall Street Journal\"[Luxenberg’s] narrative, built around biographic sketches of the main characters in the case, offers a striking view of Reconstruction and of the tragic stillbirth of freedom in that era ... In [Luxenberg’s] moving portrait of the many figures who played a role in the case, he confirms that idea as well as another: that even the most hopeless fool’s errand can emerge, in time, as an unassailable triumph.\
